Lillian Goldman, 80, Yale Law School Donor and Advocate for Women's Education

By PAUL LEWIS

Published: August 21, 2002

Lillian Goldman, who made a major contribution to the reconstruction of the library at Yale Law School, in part because it was among the first law schools in America to admit women, died yesterday at her home in East Hampton, N.Y. She was 80.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, the family said.

In 1992, Mrs. Goldman gave Yale University Law School what Guido Calabresi, then its dean, called ''probably the biggest gift in the history of American legal education'' -- more than $20 million, principally for the reconstruction and expansion of its library, which was renamed the Lillian Goldman Law Library.

Mrs. Goldman's gift was also used to endow a day care center at the law school, as well as for scholarships for underprivileged students, particularly women and those interested in the study of women's rights.

Mrs. Goldman's choice of Yale Law School reflected her friendship with Dean Calabresi, her interest in women's education and the school's early readiness to admit women and minority students when most other universities refused to accept them.

The first woman to graduate in law from Yale, Alice Jordan of Michigan, received her diploma in 1886 after the law faculty had defied the university's scandalized trustees by accepting her. It was not until 1918, however, that a formal policy of admitting women was established. Harvard Law School, by comparison, did not accept women until after World War II.

Lillian Schuman Goldman was born Jan. 17, 1922, in New York City. At 19, she married Sol Goldman, who had bought his first building at 17 and whom she urged to leave his family grocery business in Brooklyn and plunge full time into the world of New York real estate.

Mrs. Goldman played an active role in the real estate activities of her husband, who by his death in 1987 was one of the largest private landlords in New York City. But she also wrote poetry and was deeply committed to education. ''A book is a friend,'' she used to say.

After her husband's death, she turned her attention increasingly to philanthropy, creating the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust to administer her gifts.

A meeting with Rita Hayworth, the film actress, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, led to a gift of about $1 million last year to the Alzheimer's Association, for medical research. After her son, Allan, developed Parkinson's disease, she became a supporter of the Parkinson's Disease Foundation.

Both organizations presented her with awards in the last year in recognition of her help.

In 1998, she made a $5 million gift to the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan for the family center there, and a few weeks before her death, she gave $1 million for renovation of the Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

In addition to her son, Allan, of New York City, Mrs. Goldman is survived by her daughters, Amy Goldman of Rhinebeck, N.Y., and Jane Goldman and Diane Kemper of New York City.